Coal has done more damage to the environment in the last week than Fukushima has done since the tsunami. The difference is that coal's damage is the proverbial slow boil of the frog, so the easily deluded ignore it instead of getting the fark out of the pot.

It has recently become apparent that Fukushima is super farked. I watched a robotics documentary released this year, where they interviewed a bunch of guys at Honda. They were talking about how they got pulled off the Asimo robot to design robots for the Fukushima incident... so they spent 4 months building this robot that could drive around opening and closing valves at the plant. TEPCO comes along, checks it out, and goes "Yeah.. we'd like you to just replace the robotic hand with a Camera. Right now we're at an assessment stage.. we dont think we'll be ready to start turning valves for 2-3 years."

What? For real? Then they never even accepted delivery of the robot, because apparently the inside of the plant is so farked up that its literally impossible to drive a robot in there over all the rubble. Thats why there has been a sudden push for Humanoid robots.. because they need robots that can climb, crawl, jump, etc to navigate the obstacles and hazards.

In the end, if you read between the lines all over the place, it seems they probably knew Fukushima was a complete disaster right when it happened... but have done everything in their power to not tell anybody in order to prevent panic and the inevitable damages to economy etc.

Tepco is going to start moving spent fuel rods from the damaged,salt water corroded, debris filled roof top pond soon . its going to take over a year to "manually" move 1300+ rods which means there is plenty of time to drop, break, entangle, snap a rod or 3 cause a criticality incident and we all wake up to news headlines of a massive nuclear fire in what was formerly a water filled pond that now a molten nuclear bonfire.

Alonjar:It has recently become apparent that Fukushima is super farked. I watched a robotics documentary released this year, where they interviewed a bunch of guys at Honda. They were talking about how they got pulled off the Asimo robot to design robots for the Fukushima incident... so they spent 4 months building this robot that could drive around opening and closing valves at the plant. TEPCO comes along, checks it out, and goes "Yeah.. we'd like you to just replace the robotic hand with a Camera. Right now we're at an assessment stage.. we dont think we'll be ready to start turning valves for 2-3 years."

What? For real? Then they never even accepted delivery of the robot, because apparently the inside of the plant is so farked up that its literally impossible to drive a robot in there over all the rubble. Thats why there has been a sudden push for Humanoid robots.. because they need robots that can climb, crawl, jump, etc to navigate the obstacles and hazards.

In the end, if you read between the lines all over the place, it seems they probably knew Fukushima was a complete disaster right when it happened... but have done everything in their power to not tell anybody in order to prevent panic and the inevitable damages to economy etc.

Edge.bot:Tepco is going to start moving spent fuel rods from the damaged,salt water corroded, debris filled roof top pond soon . its going to take over a year to "manually" move 1300+ rods which means there is plenty of time to drop, break, entangle, snap a rod or 3 cause a criticality incident and we all wake up to news headlines of a massive nuclear fire in what was formerly a water filled pond that now a molten nuclear bonfire.

Gotta love it when people don't think about of the implications of their work. THIS is a classic example of something which should have been mostly thought out in the planning stages. I do notice this occurs frequently with engineers for some reason.

I think nuclear power is a great thing -- but obviously we need more practical engineers who will think things through. Hopefully operating plants will re-evaluate their current plants, but I know I'm dreaming on that.

Edge.bot:Tepco is going to start moving spent fuel rods from the damaged,salt water corroded, debris filled roof top pond soon . its going to take over a year to "manually" move 1300+ rods which means there is plenty of time to drop, break, entangle, snap a rod or 3 cause a criticality incident and we all wake up to news headlines of a massive nuclear fire in what was formerly a water filled pond that now a molten nuclear bonfire.

Sean M:Gotta love it when people don't think about of the implications of their work. THIS is a classic example of something which should have been mostly thought out in the planning stages. I do notice this occurs frequently with engineers for some reason.

I think nuclear power is a great thing -- but obviously we need more practical engineers who will think things through. Hopefully operating plants will re-evaluate their current plants, but I know I'm dreaming on that.

Want to know how I know that you don't know many engineers?

There is a whole field of engineering devoted to contingency planning and risk management. It's what engineers do. The problem is those things cost money and engineers are rarely the ones who write checks.

Egoy3k:Sean M: Gotta love it when people don't think about of the implications of their work. THIS is a classic example of something which should have been mostly thought out in the planning stages. I do notice this occurs frequently with engineers for some reason.

I think nuclear power is a great thing -- but obviously we need more practical engineers who will think things through. Hopefully operating plants will re-evaluate their current plants, but I know I'm dreaming on that.

Want to know how I know that you don't know many engineers?

There is a whole field of engineering devoted to contingency planning and risk management. It's what engineers do. The problem is those things cost money and engineers are rarely the ones who write checks.

So much this. I work in a technical field and virtually all engineering deficiencies are actually calculated risks (or outright dumb decisions) undertaken by bean counters and/or decision-makers focused on 'aggressive growth targets' and/or 'increased cost controls'.

The most galling part is when the engineers are dragged into post-mortems to defend things they didn't design. Fortunately for me, my work is not life and death for anyone. I can't even imagine what it must be like for someone designing buildings or bridges or cars or nuclear plants to see stock-price-driven changes to their designs that will with virtual certainty result in fatalities.

So, every time you read about some disaster that is related to something being poorly engineered, remember that the people issuing the press releases are the same people who made the decisions to opt out of safety and reliability features in order to save a few bucks, and since they control the flow of corporate information they certainly aren't going to blame themselves, hence the scapegoating of the engineers.

Edge.bot:Tepco is going to start moving spent fuel rods from the damaged,salt water corroded, debris filled roof top pond soon . its going to take over a year to "manually" move 1300+ rods which means there is plenty of time to drop, break, entangle, snap a rod or 3 cause a criticality incident and we all wake up to news headlines of a massive nuclear fire in what was formerly a water filled pond that now a molten nuclear bonfire.

Egoy3k:Sean M: Gotta love it when people don't think about of the implications of their work. THIS is a classic example of something which should have been mostly thought out in the planning stages. I do notice this occurs frequently with engineers for some reason.

I think nuclear power is a great thing -- but obviously we need more practical engineers who will think things through. Hopefully operating plants will re-evaluate their current plants, but I know I'm dreaming on that.

Want to know how I know that you don't know many engineers?

There is a whole field of engineering devoted to contingency planning and risk management. It's what engineers do. The problem is those things cost money and engineers are rarely the ones who write checks.

There are an infinite amount of things that could go wrong and only a few that must go right, for it to go as planned.

Egoy3k:Sean M: Gotta love it when people don't think about of the implications of their work. THIS is a classic example of something which should have been mostly thought out in the planning stages. I do notice this occurs frequently with engineers for some reason.

I think nuclear power is a great thing -- but obviously we need more practical engineers who will think things through. Hopefully operating plants will re-evaluate their current plants, but I know I'm dreaming on that.

Want to know how I know that you don't know many engineers?

There is a whole field of engineering devoted to contingency planning and risk management. It's what engineers do. The problem is those things cost money and engineers are rarely the ones who write checks.

vpb:So they are finally noticing that TEPCO can't manage a nuclear plant? That's nice. A little late, but nice.

Yeah hopefully the Japanese government decide to boot TEPCO around a bit and call in people who actually know what they're doing (which I'd argue TEPCO do) and will actually do it (which TEPCO by all accounts won't).

It's going to cost a pretty penny though and someones gonna have to pay. But Fukushima's issues aren't on the same level as what happened to Chernobyl, it just needs time and money and listening to the god damn engineers and doing as they tell you.

I'm not an engineer but if a structural engineer tells me that building isn't safe... I believe them because they're a structural engineer ya know?

Deep Contact:We check steel from Japan for radiation and look for any monsters in the crates.

We received some steel parts from Japan not long ago and the sender threw some promotional dust masks (typical everyday dust masks with Japanese writing on them) in the crate before they sealed it up. When we popped the crate open two employees saw the masks and went running. I had to explain to them that no these parts are not radioactive and not they won't kill you.

There is a whole field of engineering devoted to contingency planning and risk management. It's what engineers do. The problem is those things cost money and engineers are rarely the ones who write checks.

Oh, trust me, I know plenty of engineers -- a few are good friends. Others keep me plenty busy, fixing and re-engineering everything they didn't take into account when designing various systems and products. Such work has been my main source of income over the years.

I'm just getting back into town today from an industrial plant where engineers completely failed to notice this equipment was being installed in Florida, outside, and didn't bother with proper grounding, lightning suppression, 100% humidity, and forgot that it rains horizontally in the summertime. It's not a matter of cost being an option either -- the owners of the plant pretty much had an open-checkbook mentality when it came to this stuff. The engineers just flat-out failed to factor in environmental conditions. I patched it together this week, will be re-working it over the next month to address all of the design flaws.

To give them the benefit of the doubt, maybe they're not from Florida. But then again, why are they offering their services here? I know better than to take on outdoor projects up north. Snow/ice/freezing temperatures are not something I have much familiarity with, so I leave that to those who do. Know what you're good at, but most importantly: know what you don't know.

Coal has done more damage to the environment in the last week than Fukushima has done since the tsunami. The difference is that coal's damage is the proverbial slow boil of the frog, so the easily deluded ignore it instead of getting the fark out of the pot.

I knew the Alfred E. Neuman "What Me Worry" contingent of nuclear power fanboiz would be along.

You forgot to bring up the New York plant and how stupidly stupid the stupidheads are for stupidly worrying about stupid dangers there because it can't happen here.

Coal has done more damage to the environment in the last week than Fukushima has done since the tsunami. The difference is that coal's damage is the proverbial slow boil of the frog, so the easily deluded ignore it instead of getting the fark out of the pot.

I knew the Alfred E. Neuman "What Me Worry" contingent of nuclear power fanboiz would be along.

You forgot to bring up the New York plant and how stupidly stupid the stupidheads are for stupidly worrying about stupid dangers there because it can't happen here.

And you forgot to turn on your brain. Nice try trying to sneak in a last comment before the story closes though.